AMILTON D E S I G N G L A S S The artwork of Jeffrey Hamilton

Having completed a rather exhaustive program of installations in the last few months of 2016 I am taking a break for two weeks, with the studio closed until Monday January 9th. We have already begun work on the new jobs however: shown above are the full-size charcoal cartoons for a private residence in Balmain and a memorial window for Nowra Presbyterian Church.

All of the glass for Nowra has been cut and waxed onto plates ready for painting. Most of the glass for the Balmain residence has also been cut and some of it already painted, with one small section built (below)

Thank you for visiting my website and reading my blog. I wish you peace and good cheer for the holiday season, wherever you might be in the world. See you with renewed energy later in 2017: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As I mentioned in my previous blog, the studio has been insanely busy over the past 6x months or so. Yesterday I installed the last of this year's projects, a three-panelled bathroom window for a luxurious private residence in Sutton, NSW.

The beautiful finishes throughout the home include recycled timber, brick paving for interior flooring along with sanded beech in a herringbone pattern, cor-ten steel balustrades seen in the image above and exposed rammed earth walls. The client is a design consultant and approached me with the idea of making a window comprising slices of agate. But she also had an entirely different concept of a mechanical grid made up of a multitude of colours.

I suggested combining these two elements as a design solution: the organic crystal forms are thus suspended in the geometric grid.

Over the past 6 months my major commission has been two double window sets for St Peter's Anglican Church in East Maitland. With the assistance of Ron Jensen of Heritage Stained Glass, New Lambton, his off-sider Anthony and my assistant Hannah, we got these four windows and their quatrafoils installed over four days last week.

Two weeks prior to this installation, I completed the installation of a pair of stained glass door panels to a family vault in Frenchs Forrest Cemetery.

The brief for this project called for renderings of the Coat of Arms of the City of Lombardo, Italy and St Aloysius School in North Sydney. I took as my lead the bold deco design of the facade, echoing the bronze, brass and black granite.

At the beginning of August I took time out from my usual Saturday afternoon work to view a rather special exhibition by my friend Michael Galovic. Michael is one of the very few icon painters working in Australia. He is exceptionally talented and not only produces traditional icons but makes very contemporary paintings, drawing on his rich ethnic background and traditional training while commenting on the contemporary milieu.

As you can see there was lots of gold and silver. It made for a beautiful exhibition, in a beautiful location. All Saints Anglican, Hunters Hill is renowned for its superb stained glass windows, including two works by the studio of Edward Burne-Jones.

Much of Galovic's recent work has focused on Australia's Indigenous heritage and this exhibition was actually a launch of his new book Uluru.

One particularly profound work was a painting juxtaposing the resurrection of Christ with the destruction of the World Trade Centre, shown (above, right).

With only about a dozen pieces, "Art That Transfigures" was a modest exhibition, in danger of being overwhelmed by the scale of its environs, but in fact the works themselves are so beautiful and powerful that it was immensely satisfying.

Ausglass, AGDA and GLAAS Inc member Mark Brabham died 7th April, having sustained a serious injury to the head and remained in an induced coma since 9th March. Mark was a respected and loved member of both the glass and ceramics arts communities as well as highly regarded and active member of his local community of Richmond, Victoria. He was the founding Director of Albert Street Gallery and the long-established firm Australian Combustion Services. ..

On Saturday 30th April I attended the Memorial Service held at the Albert Street Gallery premises to commemorate Mark's life, along with over 150 guests. Donna Kennedy of GLAAS Inc delivered the eulogy, and then introduced Mark's lifelong friend and colleague Nick Wirdnam.

Mark Brabham was very involved in his local community and particularly supportive of the Richmond Primary School. Tracey Hammil, Principal of the School and one of 3x speakers at the service, spoke glowingly of Mark's commitment to his children's education and development and his unstinting support of the School. These attributes were echoed by another speaker, Malcolm Munro, who had some years ago furnished a report on the potential for Australian Combustion Services to expand Internationally, only to then convey Mark's desire to "spend time with my kids" and his decision to actually down-size the firm's operations.

After a moving service, the many guests broke off into several groups; those from Richmond Primary School gathered together for their own commemoration while many of the glass artists attending gathered in a room at the local library provided gratis by Richmond City Council. Later still I joined Stan Hawksworth, Liz Coleman and Dr Bronwyn and David Hughes for a light meal in Church Street before flying back to Sydney that night.

The other exhibition in Glebe Point Road that I wanted to discuss is Sydney Re-Versed, an exhibition of reverse painted glass in fired enamels by Wayne Pearson and wood block prints by his partner Marina Bishop. I've know Marina since the late 1970's: we worked together as artists at Sydney's Taronga Zoo. Wayne and Marina have been partners for many years now.

Wayne Pearson was awarded his PhD in Glass from Sydney College of the Arts in 2012 with a wonderful exhibition of reverse painted glass portraits of notable glass artists as his thesis. I was lucky indeed to have been included in the series. For each portrait Wayne recorded an interview with the artist while Marina took photographs. Some of the results were exceptional.

For this small exhibition "Sydney Re-versed" Wayne is showing a series of more intimate images of Sydney wildlife and landscape

Complimenting the glass works, Marina Bishop is showing her collection of delightful lino-prints illustrating Sydney's Harbourside Pools, of which there are many. This is a second viewing of her very well received exhibition last month at the Lane Cove Art Gallery. There is a strong synchronicity between the two bodies of work; they hang together very well indeed.

The exhibition closes this weekend but the Gallery is always worth a visit: Gauge Gallery is the ground floor rental space of the Glass Artists Gallery, which has moved upstairs. Director Maureen Cahill is more than happy to take the visitor up to the next level and guide you through the very extensive collection of studio glass.

Two exhibitions of interest currently showing in Glebe Point Road: firstly "Recent Paintings" by Jeff Manning at the The Shop Gallery.

Jeff Manning is an accomplished painter, working primarily in the magical realist style. He has collaborated with well known leadlighter Greville Wilton on several occasions to produce stained glass windows for local Churches in the New England region and in this instance the two have produced a charming suite of stained glass panels illustrating acrobats, dancers and other figures from Jeff's oeuvre.

Manning has learned much from his association with Wilton and their experience with Church stained glass work, clearly evident in the painted decoration deployed in these quirky glass panels. I particularly enjoyed the exploration of 19th Century floral backgrounds: these locate the contemporary, stylised figures within a traditional stained glass canon creating an interesting juxtaposition. Whereas the fisherman and the waitress are to my eye not as successful, harking more toward the naive style of 1970's leadlight revival which occurred throughout the USA. Merely my opinion, of course. The small detail of a bowl of spaghetti in "The Waitress" however is brilliant.

This year's masters of Glass exhibition at Paddington's Sabbia Gallery features work by Tim Edwards, Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, Lisa Cahill, Emma Varga and Brendan Scott French. These artists were invited to exhibit work based on the concept of HOME.

And it seems that each artist has pushed their ouvre that little bit further, creating an exciting exhibition of new work.

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello is well known for her interpretations in glass of traditional Indigenous fish traps. For HOME Jenni has shown pairs of wall-mounted slabs of glass titled Layers of Place.

Emma Varga has ventured into new territory with a tour-de-force of Pate de Verre work, also displayed on the Gallery wall.

Lisa Cahill, who is well known for her beautiful wall-mounted fused and slumped glass sculptures has also produced a series of thick glass slabs infused with multiple layers of illustration

And Brendan Scott French, one of my favourite glass artists, does not disappoint with his semi-abstract landscapes of fused and surface worked panels of glass mosaic.

This is a small sample of the beautiful contemporary glass art on show at HOME. You will find much better photographs than mine on the Gallery website. But the work is even more seductive in-the-flesh: the exhibition continues until February 27th so get along and see for yourself.

In the second week of January I flew to Adelaide, with a stop-over in Melbourne to visit friends and view the Warhol/Ai Weiwei Exhibition at the NGV. Brilliant! In Melbourne I met up with Dr Bronwyn Hughes and Donna Kennedy of AGDA and GLAAS Inc for lunch and much conversation. Also met with Sharon Harrison and Helen Kelly, both current members of the Ausglass Board, at Federation Square. I really enjoyed seeing the exhibition Virtuoso at Kirra Galleries, which was fortunately still showing at Fed Square.

But my main objective in flying to South Australia was to visit pioneering contemporary stained glass artist Cedar Prest, OAM. Cedar, now 76, is preparing for retirement and consequently is divesting her impressive collection of primarily mouthblown ('antique') glass.

I selected about 100x sheets in all and The Glass Emporium of Adelaide will pack and ship them to Sydney. Much of the mouthblown glass is destined for use in six double lancet windows to the clerestory of the historic St Peter's Anglican Church in East Maitland. Having visited her old studio in the church at Kensington, SA in 2005 (during the Ausglass/GAS Conference) I knew Cedar had a big range of beautiful greys, olives, browns and many unusual colours that the regular suppliers just don't stock.

Now in her 76th year, Cedar is preparing herself for retirement. Her interest has moved away from the business of glass and even the making of labarynths, a consuming passion of more recent years, has now become physically too difficult. I stayed two days with Cedar, who was the perfect host. We swam at Maslin's Beach and walked the labarynth that she built at nearby McLaren Vale with partner Robyn Hunter (who died two years ago) and 30x members of the local community.

During earlier correspondence Cedar had agreed to be interviewed to record her life story as an oral history, so most of our time was spent talking! For me it was a fascinating insight into a strong and energetic woman who has single-mindedly dedicated her life to creative endeavours both here in Australia and Internationally. Having come to know Patrick Reyntiens on a personal level, Cedar Prest was in the right place at the right time to bring about the dessemination of post-war German design sensibility in stained glass first to England, then the United States and Australia.

Arguably Cedar Prest's most important contribution to Australian stained glass has been working with groups of volunteers to bring into being many significant community based projects in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Her fiesty response to this blog, via text from the hospital bed post-op: "Not quite retired! Artists don't".

Opened by Bob Hawke, a former Prime Minister of Australia, at Nanda Hobbs Contemporary 66 King St Sydney, Louis Pratt's new exhibition of sculpture is a cracker. Dealing with issues of greed and corporate arrogance, it was described by the Director of the Gallery as their most important to date and pulls no punches in its political statement about the mining and export of coal.

Pratt uses coal itself as the medium for his sculptures, pulverised and reconstituted with resin, then overlaid with gold leaf to create a visually potent work heavily laden with metaphor and meaning.

Its not only environmental issues discussed however; Pratt lays it on the line where corporate culture is concerned, leaving the viewer in no doubt as to where his politics lie on the Green-Capitalist spectrum. With works such as "Snake Skull", "Business As Usual" and "Retirement" he comments eloquently on the hypocrisy embedded within the business community. And of course the irony of these works being for sale at not-insignificant prices cannot be ignored. A detail I found particularly appealing was the gold lapel pin COAL attached to one of the garments.

Many of these works are actual high-fashion corporate garments recently purchased, soaked in resin and coated in gold leaf. The nails pinning the three elements of "Retirement" to the wall are shiny brass-plated nails; likewise the knife thrust into the leather jacket of "Business as Usual", metaphorically stabbing the wearer in the back. Not everyone in the large audience on opening night would see that those ties hanging on the wall are also nooses.

Not all the works in this show are as successful of course; I found the bucket of gold-coated coal nuggets in "Fools Gold" rather twee with its rotating coloured lights. I got the reference to an imitation coal-fired heater, but it just didn't work for me. However I did particularly enjoy the graphic work, a set of four prints in black and gold leaf. As they are framed under glass, the reflections prevented me from photographing them successfully. So do get along to see the exhibition, which is open until 18th December; this is one not to miss.